Where librarians and the internet meet: internet searching, Social Media tools, search engines and their development. These are my personal views.

June 19, 2014

The EU ruling on the right to be forgotten seems to have opened up a rather nasty little can of worms, and I can't see that it's going to be getting any better in the near future. The Supreme Court of British Columbia issued a temporary injunction last week, ordering Google to delete websites not only from the Canadian version of Google, but across the world as well. (The background to this story is about a company that wants to stop a rival selling gadgets that were created as a result of stolen trade secrets. This company wants Google to stop linking to the rival sites - more than 300 of them.)

This is of course an attempt to impose Canadian law on the rest of the world, but it didn't appear to bother the judge in the slightest. It's been suggested her decision was inspired at least partly by the European ruling ordering Google to abide by requests from people to be forgotten in the search results.

So we're entering difficult waters here; could the Russian courts for example rule that Google should delete all of the gay and lesbian sites because they don't like them? What about a Middle Eastern country demanding that Google remove all references to Jewish websites? This whole issue is very quickly turning into a mess - results from search engines are already full of holes for one reason or another, and this isn't going to make searching for content any easier in the future.

There are of course plenty of times when websites have to be taken down because of the material that they have published, but the point here is that it's the website that is targetted, not the search engine. Once the search engine - the pointer to the content is attacked (and I know that's strong language, but I think that it's appropriate), what next? Will libraries have to do the same thing - it's not too much of a stretch to put Google and a library in the same boat here. Thankfully the BBC has already taken something of a stand in their blog "Should the BBC unpublish any of its online content?" I'll quote from the blog: "Today, the BBC is publishing Editorial Policy Guidance about when we remove or amend BBC online content. Essentially, this says that material on the BBC website which is not available for a limited time period will become part of a permanently accessible archive that we are reluctant to remove or change and that we will only do so in exceptional circumstances. We are also reluctant to remove or alter programmes available on BBC iPlayer during the catch-up period."

It's great that the BBC are doing this, but I wonder how long they'll be able to hold that particular line. Don't forget the requirement on ISPs to filter and block content unless requested otherwise - now that this is in place the technology can allow the Government to effectively block what we can see in the UK, though of course, that only works well if you don't know how to get around the blocks. Are we heading towards a two tier system of information delivery, with those who don't understand how to search privately are missing out information from those that do? (Clearly the answer to that is already yes, but it's going to get worse).

What's the situation going to be like for people who decide that they need to archive specific types of content, such as the Internet Archive, aka the Wayback Machine. How about the UK Web Archive? The next step in this process would surely be for courts to demand the removal of that data as well.

And what is the role of the library in all of this? Should we move towards using browsers such as TOR, which protect our privacy, and direct users towards search engines that don't track us? To what extent should we be advising our library members on this issues? If we have a responsibility to find and present information, how far do we actually take that? If we can, for example get content that Canadian colleagues can't, and they ask us for the information that legally they can't get themselves, what do we do?

Now, I've already been criticised for my concerns over the insane European ruling, and I've been called 'shrill' but I honestly think that we're beginning to go down a slippery slope and we're not going to be able to climb back again. This situation is going to happen again and again, with corporates squabbling in the courts and using search engines as the battle grounds, with the people who need the information being the victims. If this isn't a case for a strong public library system then I'm not entirely sure what is.

June 13, 2014

The European Court of Justice has just told the world that they are clueless, inept and embarassingly short of knowledge on how the internet works. As you're almost certainly aware, they have ruled that Google is a data controller” under the 19-year-old European law on data protection, and as such could be required not to display links to information that is “inadequate, irrelevant...or excessive”.

There is no world in which any of this makes sense at all. However, let's break it down into various elements, because it's more fun that way.

Do people have a right to be forgotten? There's plenty of material out there on people which is less than complimentary, and much of it is also wrong. A lot of that data is also historical in nature, but unlike incorrect information that just sits inactive in a book or journal, this information can still remain very active. Take the example of Max Mosley, who was involved in a scandal some time back. For most of us, that particular episode is already forgotten, but if you do a search on Google you may (and I stress the word may) see that Google is giving you auto suggest options which relate to the incident. I'm not seeing them on my searches as you can see:

However, other people may. Now, there's not an awful lot that Google can do about that, since Google reflects what the rest of the world does, and if lots of people write about a particular issue, it's going to pick up on that. The real issue is that the content is already out there and will continue to remain out there, whatever Google does. Does Mr Mosley have a right to some sort of protection? Sure he does, but that protection needs to come from him talking to the original publishers of content, not the people who are providing it. Besides, when I see that material, I can also read the entire story and make up my own mind. So whose rights are more important - his to try and make it more difficult for me to find publically available information on him, or mine, to allow me to easily find that information? You may well have some sympathy with the man, which is fine. How about when we look at other people who are requesting that information about them is removed from Google's indexes, such as people with a criminal past, drunk drivers, sex abusers and so on. Do they have the right to be forgotten, or do I have the right to know that they might be living across the road from me? A lot of the people requesting the 'right to be forgotten' are doing so because of their criminal convictions. In the course of every day life many of those people will have the right to have their conviction 'spent' under current UK law, but that's a rather different issue. So the first point - who has the stronger right?

The 'right to be forgotten' isn't a right at all - since they are NOT being forgotten, just not indexed by Google. It would perhaps be more sensible to call it a 'right to censor material about me that I don't like without actually contacting the original publishers of the data'. Moreover, Google intends to indicate in search results if material has been removed as a result of this requirement. Now - if you do a search for 'Phil Bradley' and Google tells you that it has been required to remove material, isn't the first thing you do going to be to go to another search engine? Or if you can't be bothered to do that, go from google.co.uk to google.com since the ruling only applies to the UK version of the search engine.

Why just Google? As we all know, there are plenty of other search engines out there (and if you need them, I've got a list of over 200 search engines), and although Bing is attempting to create a right to be forgotten feature, that's 2 down, 198 to go. And what about new search engines? Who is going to monitor those? No-one, as far as I can tell. So the ruling doesn't actually work on these grounds either.

Next up - who makes the decision on what is in the public interest, as opposed to an invasion of privacy? It's not going to be the courts. Google is going to create a panel who will sift through these requests, and it's got a number of high profile people on it, but they're not going to be wasting their valuable time doing it day after day. It's going to get passed onto some lowly Google employee who makes decisions based on... well, I'm really not sure. Who is going to represent the public interest? What is the 'court of appeal' over this? Deafening silence.

So we've reached a stage when the European Court of Justice is handing over control of information (or at least partial control) to an American corporate. In what world does this make any sense at all?

So there isn't a single sensible reason for this ruling. This will not protect people, either the ones who want to be forgotten, or anyone else. It's ineffective because it doesn't appear to relate to all search engines, and it doesn't even cover all Google search engine variants. It's an abrogation of control to an unaccountable, unelected body. Insane.

May 06, 2014

DuckDuckGo is one of the search engines that can reasonably seen to be a competitor to Google, at least in the area of privacy, because it doesn't store or track the searches that you do. Not only is this a Good Thing, but it also means that DDG can't personalise your results, cutting out potentially useful material in the way that Google can.

DDG has just improved its interface, making it much smoother, and even easier to use. Let's look at the old version for a search:

Useful of course, but it's not going to set the world alight. It's also not easy to see how you can search for images or video for example. However, the new version which you'll find at https://next.duckduckgo.com/ is rather different.

The disambiguation is far clearer, and the white space makes it much easier to read each result. You can click on the images/videos option and see those displayed equally neatly, and can change the display method into a tiled approach if you want. I really like the new approach - much fresher and more helpful. It's still in a beta mode at the moment, but it will be moving across to become the default in short order, I'm sure.

April 07, 2014

If you prefer to use the UK version of Google rather than the .com version you may already have seen 'in depth' articles in your search results. For those people who use google.com this is something that we've seen for some time. Basically Google will provide you with 3 articles related to your keyword, and you'll find them towards the bottom of the page of results. The idea is that you'll continue to use Google as a self contained ready reference tool, but unfortunately as my screenshot shows, I'd have to question the value of the articles that they find.

Does Google seriously think that articles written in 2009, 2011 and 2012 are going to be the most helpful ones out there? A search for surveillance also gave me articles from 2012. How is this helpful? In comparison, Silobreaker gave me a huge wealth of material, both current and archival, with video, images, in focus pieces, networks, blogged material, quotes, press releases and a whole host more. Google can't lay a glove on a resource as comprehensive, authoritative and current as that. Too little, too late Google.

March 31, 2014

As we all know, search engines like tracking you - your IP address, your search terms and so on. They use this to build up profiles, store the data and so on. It can be a real pain trying to search without this information being stored, but you can try Disconnect Private Search. This routes your search queries through their proxy servers before they go to the popular search engines, including Google, Bing and Yahoo. Instead of these search engines knowing that a search is coming from you or your computer, all searches look like they’re coming from Disconnect. They prevent search engines from sending your search queries to the web sites you visit from search results pages, and encrypt your search queries, which prevents your Internet Service Provider (ISP) from seeing your searches.

You can install their service onto your browser, or if you're unable to do that, you can search directly from their website:

When you run your search you'll get a drop down box next to the search box for the engine that you're using, and you can choose to search on Google, Bing, Yahoo, DuckDuckGo or Blekko. In actual fact, it's almost acting like a mini multi search engine at that point, since you can flick from one to the other. Not entirely sure why they have added in DDG, as that is already a private search engine, but more is better than less.

You may notice a few differences to the search results - since the search engine doesn't know where you are, it can't provide you with local results, and some advanced search functionality is unavailable, although they're working on it. I think it's worth giving this a go, even if only from the website; it's really interesting to see which searches differ, certainly in comparision to your own results that Google gives you, based on your Google account!

January 26, 2014

Google provides access to a variety of different features, and to save space they pop these up into the menu under the space bar, where you can access options such as Images or News for example. There's also a handy 'More' option, which can be used to really show you the real range of what you can search for. At least... it used to. It doesn't any more. I'm getting 4 options now, instead of the 10 or so that I used to get. The options are vaguely context sensitive, based on the search that you run. 'Libraries' gave me Videos, Shopping, Flights and Applications, while 'Librarian' changed the first of those to Maps. Mostly however, the options were those I've already listed. The people over at the Google Forums are absolutely hopping mad about it, and I don't blame them.

What about all of the other neat little ways you could search you may wonder? My feeling is that Google is starting to hide them away to use the excuse of 'no-one ever uses this feature' when they want to cut it. However, until then, most of these options are still available in one form or another. I've listed some of them below:

If you like using these I would be afraid, very afraid. Quite how long before they go the way of Google Reader etc I wouldn't like to guess. I still can't get my head around Google's thinking over this - there are plenty of new search engines coming along, particularly in the social media area where Google is weak, but instead of actually innovating, they are retrenching and hoping their name will carry them through. I just wonder how long they can sustain that - particularly in the light of Facebook's new search options.

January 13, 2014

Just how much can we tell about someone just using very basic data? I have been playing around with a tool from MIT called Immersion, which looks at very basic information about your emails. I found the tool via an article called 'Think Metadata isn't intrusive?' which if you haven't read it, I would suggest doing so. Basically you give the tool access to your email account metadata—not the content, just the time and date stamps, and “To” and “Cc” fields and it numbercrunches for a very long time (it took 15 hours for it to do mine) before giving you back a series of graphs.

This is the type of information that you get - you can save graphs with or without names, and I've chosen the latter for obvious privacy reasons:

Each circle is a person - and the larger the circle, the more email goes back and forth between you and them. The colours represent groupings; the orange group for example is people closely related to or at CILIP for example. This collection is a total figure of 9.6 years, 367 collaborators and 30,000 emails. Now, if I go back to 2009, before I started working more closely with CILIP, the pattern is very different:

It doesn't take a genius to work out that my work and social patterns have changed dramatically over the three year period - the colours relate to different grouping this time by the way, so the orange now relates to another set of people that I was working with very closely at that period of time.

I can also get other basic details:

and again it's not too difficult to work out some basic information about what I have been doing simply based on the bare minimum details. If I flick across to collaborators it's again very easy to make assumptions about what I'm doing at any given period of time. Obviously it's far easier for me, since we're looking at data about me, so it's an open book, but even if you know very little about me, you can quickly start making assumptions, and they're not going to be too far from the mark, even if you have no idea of the content of my emails.

The idea that the government doesn't want to access the content of your email, but simply have basic details may not - at first glance - be a cause for that much concern. However, it really IS a big deal, and I'd encourage you to consider experimenting yourself. You may of course have concerns about letting MIT have access to these basic details - but then, that's what the UK government want. Think about it.

January 10, 2014

I look at lots of new tools, and 'Jelly' has been making the news recently. Jelly was founded in April 2013 by Biz Stone (of Twitter fame) and Ben Finkel. It's supposed to be a new search engine that brings people together, and lets them connect and share stuff. It's basically an app that you put onto your smartphone, and if you have a question, you take a photograph, ask your question and then throw it out into the world, hoping your contacts will be able to provide you with an answer. To be honest, if this had been produced by anyone other than Biz Stone it would have sunk without a trace. Because it's bad. Not only is it bad, it's pointless.

First of all, it's an app. Nothing wrong with apps and I use them all the time - but it's nice when there's a desk/laptop version as well. Just having something that runs on one platform really isn't a great idea, irrespective of the platform, because it's closing out a lot of people who might otherwise use it. Secondly, it's not a search engine because... you can't freakin' well search! All that you can do is mindlessly flick from one photograph to another, trying to find something that is of interest. Third, it's not useful - sure, if I want to know something I can post my question, and it relies on people seeing the question and then spending their precious time answering it. It's serendipity gone wild. Fourth, I have to append a photograph - I can't just ask a question. What if I don't have a photograph to use? Something random and pointless is required, which again doesn't help matters.

Fifth and finally, Jelly is a pointless answer to a question that we don't need to ask. If I need to know something, I'm going to ask on Twitter, Facebook, Google+ or Quora, where I am not restricted to adding in a photograph, and I can share my question widely, and properly engage with people who want to answer the question. If I need to know what something is while I'm out, I'll use Google goggles on my smartphone to see if that can tell me. If something is particularly urgent, then I'm not going to have time to post a picture, wait for responses that may never come and then act on them.

Jelly is the worst of the social media applications that are out there - expecting to engage people simply because it's not something else, because it's backed by a big name, and because it uses a smartphone app to do its work. It's a total waste of time and it's not going to catch on; it'll be dead in 3 months, but will limp along for a year before it gets put out of its misery.

October 19, 2013

Unfortunately - for my blood pressure - I came across an article the other day called "Do Your Students Know How To Search?" from a website called Edudemic and it was written by Holly Clark who is also on Twitter as @hollyedtechdiva. She's referring to some points that the esteemed Helene Blowers makes about a new digital divide. I take two quotes from her article: "There is a new digital divide on the horizon" and "Helene Blowers has come up with seven ideas about the new digital divide".

I read the article with interest - there was a fair amount of information about how to search Google, which is all well and good. We should be teaching "phrase searching", how to -exclude from a search and a few others. Nothing wrong with that of course, but what it doesn't say is what interests me rather more. Such as 'what about other search engines?' If you want to teach people about filter bubbles, primary sources and country searching, how about teaching them about it properly, which means - y'know - talking about search engines that do the whole thing rather BETTER than Google? How about talking about validation and authority? Comparing the relative merits of Google and other search engines? Pulling up examples of search engines that focus on the news, or on social media? Because, Ms Clark THAT is what teaching students how to search is all about. It's not about rehashing basic Google concepts (important though they are) it's a far bigger and more complex process than that.

Ask anyone who teaches search - and in fact you dear reader, may well be one of them - and you'll know that a quick overview of a couple of basic Google commands is about as much use to students as a chocolate teapot. Probably less, actually, since they could eat the chocolate!

However - and this is where it gets really amusing - if you cast your minds back to the two quotes that I used - there is a very clear emphasis this is something new. In actual fact, this digital divide is something that Ms Blowers was writing about back in 2010. Yup - 3 years old, Ms Clark - three years old. How about this for an idea - how about teaching students how to evaluate content, and check it for currency? This is just an embarassment.